Courted by the Texas Millionaire. Crystal Green

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СКАЧАТЬ to see it up close?” she asked.

      He shrugged. “Why not?”

      Before she fetched it, she went to the kitchen, handing off her ticket. When she walked out to the bar, Wiley had returned to his seat, hunched over his beer, not saying a word.

      Davis caught her by the apron. She stifled a gasp; his hand was near her hip, and the patch of skin under her pants burned with his imprint.

      “Who’s that guy?” he asked.

      “Don’t know.” She tugged away from him, making it her point to show him that touching her wasn’t allowed, even if they had “cleared the air.”

      Her skin was still humming when she left. And to make matters worse, the sensation was spreading along her hip, getting to places that Davis Jackson had no right getting to.

      After she fetched the photo from the wall, she got back to the stranger’s table. He seemed to drink in the picture, but she couldn’t get any more than that out of him.

      “Tony Amati never had kids, so you couldn’t be a direct descendant,” she said. “Then again, don’t they say everyone in the world has a doppelgänger?”

      The stranger narrowed his eyes at the photo. “I suppose we bear a resemblance to each other.”

      In spite of all the reading she loved to do, as well as the Founder’s Weekend celebrations, which seemed to honor the town and not the man, Tony had always remained somewhat of a mystery, no matter how much digging she’d done. Evidently, he’d been a private sort who’d never talked about where he’d come from, one who’d reinvented himself out west, as so many others had done. He’d been rumored to be a Texas Ranger and had been wealthy, helping out families in the area. And then there was the matter of his death … the biggest mystery about Tony Amati.

      The stranger kept his gaze on the photograph a little longer before handing it back to her. She tried to read him again, but he was like stone, his face etched into a hard-bitten expression that revealed nothing.

      She also felt that familiar thrill of a mystery—answers to be chased and caught. She almost even felt just as she used to when she’d gone to her real job every day.

      “As interesting as all this is,” he said, “I’m really just passing through this place.”

      “Well, it’s good to have you around for however long you’re here …”

      “Jared,” he said, offering no more than that.

      “I’m Violet, and I’ll be right back with your beer.”

      But after she fetched it from the bar, Jared proved very untalkative, settling into his seat, pulling his hat back down over his brow, ignoring the remainder of the stares from the rest of the patrons.

      Davis had left the Queen of Hearts long before last call, but that didn’t mean he’d gone home to his ranch on the outskirts of town. He was restless. His mind, his body … neither of them could shut down.

      Not with Violet here again.

      He’d gone back to the newspaper office, firing up his computer, intending to get some work done. But he kept seeing Violet with her apron around the hips he’d once stroked with his hands, kept seeing her making her way around the bar and grill tonight, chancing smiles at anyone who wasn’t him.

      Hell, she’d even seemed more comfortable with that stranger who’d wandered into the saloon.

      Davis forced his mind to focus on the Tony Amati look-alike. An idea had sparked in him, in spite of his ridiculous fascination with Violet, and he tried to put all his energies into the distraction now.

      Anything to take his mind off her. Anything.

      A story about a look-alike such as this stranger would be a hell of an angle for Founder’s Weekend, he thought. The past arises in St. Valentine …

      He tried to forget just how personally relevant that thought was as he did a computer search that turned up next to nothing about Tony Amati. Afterward, Davis accessed the digitized archives and skimmed through old editions of the Recorder, just to see if there was anything to keep him even busier.

      He didn’t know a whole lot of personal stuff about the town founder, and, from the looks of it, there was a whole lot less than Davis had expected to discover about a man who’d been so key to this town’s development.

      But, after about an hour of frustration, he finally did uncover something. A tidbit that would require much more research.

      An article with the headline: Amati Dies of Unknown Causes.

      The text was extremely vague, just an extended obituary about Amati’s love of privacy and his leadership qualities. It was as if Tony’s death hadn’t rocked St. Valentine much at all. Then again, common knowledge had always maintained that he’d died alone, out of the public eye.

      When Davis saw another article, planted deep in the back of the same edition, he looked even closer.

      Sheriff Kills Burglars in Home.

      Davis went over that story, too, yet it offered about as much as Amati’s obituary had.

      He didn’t know what it was exactly, but something was poking at him—the “other” sense all reporters relied on.

      That nudge-nudge that kept them up at nights.

      There wasn’t much else to go on, but it was a mystery Davis decided to pursue in his spare time, between overseeing the next biweekly edition and reporting on preparations for Founder’s Weekend so the story could go out to bigger outlets, hopefully attracting some visitors to St. Valentine in a week.

      It’d be just what this town needed … and what he needed for them.

      He locked up the office at midnight, spying Mr. and Mrs. Osborne and Violet coming out of the bar and grill down the street.

      Was it his imagination when he saw Violet hesitate as they secured the big doors in front of the saloon’s entrance? Was she looking toward the newspaper office because her reporter radar was up and running, too, after meeting the stranger?

      Or was she looking down here for a different reason altogether, one that made Davis’s reluctant heartbeat race? Was she just as eager to see him once again as he was her?

      As Davis caught Violet’s gaze under the moonlight, he couldn’t move. He was frozen by the hunger for her that had only grown hour by hour, sending him to the Queen of Hearts after his party, even after he’d made it crystal clear that he’d found closure with her.

      But had he?

      Violet seemed to be under the same spell, unmoving, as her parents headed toward their truck, which was parked in an alley beside the building.

      Davis couldn’t stay away, and he moved toward Violet. Standing near their vehicle, her father watched Davis from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat.

      “Gary,” Davis said, nodding to him, then greeted his wife, as well.

      Andrea СКАЧАТЬ